In 2013 our lives took an unexpected turn. My husband,
Brian, and I had a comfortable lifestyle in Silicon Valley with
our four healthy girls, great jobs, and a beautiful home. We
worked hard to make a good living there for many years: Brian
owned his own small law firm, and I had built a number of small
brick-and-mortar businesses, including two restaurants. We
had lots of great friends and many social commitments. We
had everything we were supposed to want—we were living the
American dream. But we were inspired to change the direction
of our lives. We bought a ranch and decided to move to a rural
mountain town to raise livestock together as a family.
I grew up in Menlo Park, the heart of Silicon Valley, before it became a
bustling hub of opportunity. I left California to attend college in Virginia,
where I started on the path to medical school. After college, I returned to my
hometown and started tutoring local kids. I saw a need for a place where the
kids could do their homework with tutors on staff, so I started my first business,
called Academic Trainers. It made me realize how much I loved owning
a small business. And I had big ideas for more.
A few years later I was volunteering at a fundraiser and met a tall, handsome
guy who drove a pickup truck but spent his days in a suit and tie. It
was love at first sight. Brian was working his way up in a big firm, and I was
managing my tutoring business and working on my next venture. We were
married in 2006. After our first baby, Francie, came along, Brian decided to
start his own law practice and leased office space upstairs from my business.
We enjoyed working close to each other and decided we wanted more of that.
Along with a few other family-centered businesses, we opened two farm-totable
restaurants serving quality food made from the best ingredients we could
find. We worked with top local chefs to identify just what we wanted and what
was important to us.
Sourcing consistent, high-quality meats year-round proved to be difficult.
After a lot of research and a few years of searching, we knew exactly what we
were looking for: well-marbled Black Angus beef from cattle with excellent
genetics that were raised naturally on grasses and finished with barley. We
wanted beef that was dry-aged for twenty-one to twenty-eight days for outstanding
flavor and consistency every time.
When we couldn’t find anything that met our criteria, we decided to do
it ourselves. We found the historic Sharps Gulch Ranch in the mountains of
Northern California outside of Siskiyou County—or we like to say it found us.
Our hope was that we could build an operation to produce our own consistently
excellent, humanely raised meats, all while continuing life as we knew it.
With some help from my brother-in-law, a fifth-generation cattle rancher
in Eastern Oregon, we set up operations and jumped into ranch life while trying
to run our businesses in Silicon Valley. When we purchased the property,
we thought we’d just go up on the weekends, hiring a ranch manager to handle
the day-to-day operations while we managed our businesses during the week.
We quickly realized we couldn’t do both things well.
A few months later—and about two hours into the six-hour commute we
made every weekend—I turned to Brian and asked, “What are we doing?
Driving to the ranch every weekend is not sustainable. Let’s commit to this full
time.” It was an easy decision to make. But it wasn’t easy to unwind the life
we’d created.
Brian and I decided to sell our home and all of our businesses, including
our two restaurants and his law firm, and move our family of six to the ranch
for good. It was a huge change. We left behind the only livelihood we’d ever
known and set our sights on creating a life and a sustainable business in a
rural town with a population of just 681 people.
This decision wasn’t much of a shock to those who knew us. People often
ask my mom if she’s shocked we ended up as ranchers, and her answer is
always “No, it makes perfect sense for Mary and Brian.” Brian and I both
have deep roots in California agriculture and share a love of the rural Western
lifestyle. In 1867 Brian’s great-great-grandfather Casper and his wife, Theresa,
came to Ventura County from Germany to farm sugar beets. Casper was
known as one of the first agriculturalists in the region. The couple eventually
bought the four-thousand-acre Conejo ranch. Their son, Antone, continued
ranching and later settled in Orange County, where Brian’s dad started their
family in agriculture. Brian’s dad, Tom, was a banker in Ventura as a young
man but decided to go back to his farming roots when Brian was an infant.
Moving his young family to Imperial County, Tom grew alfalfa, grains, and
specialty crops. When Brian was sixteen, the family moved north to Tehama
County, where Tom began to farm prunes, almonds, and walnuts. Sadly, he
suffered greatly from Parkinson’s soon after the move and passed away in
2015, but Brian’s dad made many visits to our ranch before he died. He was
clearly very proud to see his son following in his footsteps.
My ancestors immigrated to the Pajaro Valley from Ireland in 1851 and
grew strawberries, apples, lettuce, and sugar beets in Santa Cruz County. They
sold gold-rush supplies to miners and worked as farmers in the Watsonville
area for five generations. Much of my family remains in California to this day.
My grandfather moved away from farming but was a great man with big ideas
and an entrepreneurial spirit. He always appreciated farmers and ranchers
and found his own business niches—a trait I like to believe he passed on to
me when I was a young girl riding around in the front seat of his car while he
talked about his next big idea.
So Brian and I set our sights on creating a new business in ranching in the
mountains of Northern California. We had a big job: we needed to find a way
to make the ranch work to support our family, and possibly even support the
next generation someday. The first year of business was tough—Brian and I
jumped with both feet into a life we hardly knew. We had 1,800 acres of pastureland
and mountain hillside, and quickly started growing our herd of cattle,
flock of sheep, and passel of pigs.
It took us well over a year to determine the best way to ship and sell the
meat we were working so hard to produce. We raise the animals for market,
meaning that we breed and care for them before harvest, and then after butchery
we ship the beef, pork, and lamb directly to customers all over the country.
Little by little we grew our business from the bottom up, selling small boxes
to friends and family, traveling for deliveries, and selling from farm stands.
Eventually we opened the Farm Store, from where we now ship our meats
directly to customers’ doorsteps anywhere in the United States.
Moving to the ranch was a big change for our home life as well. All of a
sudden our family went from sharing a spacious house in the suburbs to a
rustic 760-square-foot cabin with only a wood-burning stove for heat. Our initial
thought was to live in the cabin for a short time while we got our bearings
and eventually build a larger house on the property. But we soon realized we
craved the comfort of the cabin; we all loved being so close together. We simply
didn’t need much more space. We spend so much of our time outside working
that this small, cozy home is perfect for our family and all that we need.
Living on the ranch has made our four daughters—ages seven to twelve
and all of whom really are named Mary—extremely independent and resourceful.
We honestly couldn’t do all this without them. The hard, physical work
of raising animals, growing hay, and running our businesses has meant we’ve
relied on them to help from the very beginning. The girls were young when
we moved to the ranch, but we quickly realized that they were so much more
capable than we could have ever imagined. They learned how to drive the hay
truck, take care of their horses, and are in charge of the bottle babies, helping
the momma animals through difficult births.
This collaborative effort has allowed us to branch out beyond livestock. Not
long after moving, we built our camp area up the hill from the cabin so that
we’d have a place to host family and friends on the ranch. We also offer summer
experiences, where we share the food we raise, cocktails, and a little more
about ranch life and what goes into raising animals with our guests.
In 2017 we opened Five Marys Burgerhouse, a restaurant and bar in town,
after swearing we’d never open another restaurant. But when the opportunity
to purchase the historic bar came up, it just made sense. We serve all our own
meats to the local community as well as to guests who visit from near and far.
We also produce our own small-batch single-barrel whiskey with our partner
Alchemy Distillery in Arcata, California, and use local produce raised by our
neighbors whenever possible.
Taking a chance by purchasing the ranch and jumping in with our family
was the best decision that Brian and I have ever made. We look back at where
we were just a year ago, or six years ago, when we started from scratch and
can’t believe how far we’ve come. It hasn’t been easy, but as we like to say,
“Nothing is easy—if it were, everyone would do it. But it’s worth it.”
This cookbook is a culmination of all of this, an invitation to join us around
the table to share a meal, a glimpse into our free-range life of dirt and sunshine
and animals and community. Because, at the end of the day, when the
sheep are tucked away in the barn and the woodstove is warming the cabin,
there’s nothing we like more than to gather in the kitchen, cooking together
and savoring some of our favorite family recipes. We are proud to share them
here with you, and we hope you enjoy sharing them with your own friends
and family.
Copyright © 2020 by Mary Heffernan. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
